An interesting moment in this week’s televised health care summit occurred when the President, taking issue with statements from Senator John McCain, reminded him that the “election was over”.    This demeaning dismissal of those in disagreement created an opportunity to say something to the President on behalf of those who have been troubled by the dirty details of the proposals that were passed in each Congressional chamber. 

McCain missed it.   What he should have said in response is this:

“With all due respect to the office you temporarily hold Mr. President,  there is a deep divide that separates many in this room on matters pertaining to the role and size of government, what the American people can afford, and the impact new entitlements will have on private sector and small business job creation during these difficult times.    It has nothing to do with elections past or future, but all to do with listening to the people.

 “The American people speak to us in many ways, through elections, in Town Hall meetings, letters, and in these modern times through public opinion measurements.     While the people did choose you over me in the last election, the specifics of the reforms you advocate were not presented to them.    As the bills and details you embrace were understood, the people started to speak out.   It is good for our country when the people speak out on important issues of the day and comments of dismissal are insulting.

 “The responsibility to listen to the people didn’t stop on Election Day.   The American people are to be trusted not diminished in this process.    Our Founders created a government of deliberately limited power to be subservient to the people.   While we all are here to solve problems and overcome challenges, we must never detach from the will of the people we work for.

“To insist on pushing through a program that the people don’t want, with the clear knowledge that they want us to start over, is a betrayal of the basic foundation of our nation.   I didn’t sit alone in a POW camp suffering as I did in defense of a nation where its leaders could dismiss the people as easily as some in this room are prepared to do.  

“Yes, Mr. President, elections come and go as do elected officials.  The strength of this country has been in our duty to listen to the people.   The day we stop, we will have lost more than our jobs, we will have destroyed everything those who have fought and died for us have sacrificed.”

(Ed Martin lives in Tucson and is Arizona State Chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus.)